SOTHEBY’S CONTEMPORARY ART EVENING SALE TOTALS $128.1 MILLION

The New York Times’s Carol Vogel reports that Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale on Tuesday achieved a total of $128.1 million, which is just over the auction’s low estimate of $120 million. Nine of the fifty-eight works in the auction failed to sell, and several of the more anticipated lots, such as Warhol’s Sixteen Jackies, 1964, sold at the low end of their estimates. (With fees, Warhol’s silkscreen canvas went for $20.2 million; it was estimated at $20 million–$30 million.) “Sometimes it works but sometimes it’s difficult,” Tobias Meyer, the director of Sotheby’s contemporary art department and the evening’s auctioneer, said after the auction. “Still, being able to sell 84 percent is actually OK.”